Vatican gets mixed report card on finance reforms

Pope Francis waves as he arrives for his weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican, Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2013. Pope Francis has been selected by Time magazine as the Person of the Year. In only his first year, the Pope was selected by the magazine's editors as the person who had the greatest impact on the world, for good or bad, during 2013.

European inspectors gave the Vatican a mixed report card Thursday in its efforts to comply with international norms to fight money laundering and terror financing: While they praised the speedy overhaul of its legal code, they said the jury is still out about how those new laws are being implemented.

“The Holy See is fully committed to continuing to improve further the effective implementation of all necessary measures to build a well-functioning and sustainable system aimed at preventing and fighting financial crimes.”

Monsignor Antoine Camilleri, head of the Vatican delegation to the Moneyval committee

VATICAN CITY — European inspectors gave the Vatican a mixed report card Thursday in its efforts to comply with international norms to fight money laundering and terror financing: While they praised the speedy overhaul of its legal code, they said the jury is still out about how those new laws are being implemented.

The chief complaint in the report by the Council of Europe's Moneyval committee was that the Holy See's financial watchdog agency has yet to inspect the embattled Vatican bank, a true test of whether the new laws to fight financial crimes are being enforced at the Holy See's main financial institution.

The report revealed that 105 suspicious transactions had been flagged to the financial watchdog agency in 2013 as potential cases of money-laundering — a significant increase over 2012, when only a half-dozen were reported. The increase stemmed from a review by the bank — formally called the Institute for Religious Works — of all its accounts.

Three of those cases were forwarded to Vatican prosecutors for investigation, including one that made headlines this year: the case of the Vatican accountant, Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, who was arrested in June after he allegedly tried to smuggle 20 million euros ($26 million) from Switzerland into Italy.

The Scarano affair prompted the bank's top two managers to resign and laid bare the lax controls that for years fueled the bank's reputation as an off-shore tax haven where money could be laundered. Scarano is also under investigation for alleged money-laundering in a separate case involving his Vatican bank accounts.

John Ringguth, the executive secretary of the Moneyval committee, said the Vatican's efforts to address shortcomings in its financial crime legislation were "enormous" given it had essentially no laws on the books prior to 2010.

But given that Moneyval's evaluation was primarily a desk-based review and that the Vatican's financial intelligence authority hasn't conducted an inspection, "we're not in a position to really make a judgment about the effectiveness of implementation."

"Are they following it? I'm not in a position to judge. None of us are at this point," he said in a telephone interview from Strasbourg, France.

The Vatican submitted itself to the Moneyval evaluation process more than three years ago in a bid to shed its shady reputation and comply with the requirements of signatories to the 2009 EU Monetary Convention. Since then, the Vatican has written and rewritten laws criminalizing money laundering, ratified U.N. anti-crime treaties and created the financial watchdog agency to supervise its financial activities and work with other countries in cross-border investigations, among other measures.

Pope Francis has ramped up the reforms, forming two commissions of inquiry into the Vatican's finances. Outside consultants have been brought in to help speed along compliance.

Moneyval's latest report praised the Vatican's efforts to revamp its legislation to clarify the role and autonomy of the financial watchdog agency, and measures taken to improve reporting of suspicious transactions.

But it said it was "somewhat surprising" that the Financial Intelligence Authority watchdog hadn't inspected the bank or the Vatican's other main financial institution APSA, where Scarano worked, and said a basic regulation to make sure criminals don't end up in management positions must be enacted quickly.

The Vatican has promised to conduct an inspection this month or next.

The report was the second from Moneyval. In July 2012, the Vatican passed the inaugural Moneyval test but received poor or failing grades for its bank and financial intelligence authority. This second round didn't revise those grades but merely evaluated how the Vatican had responded to recommendations made last year to improve compliance.